The Linguistics Major

Important note: those who declared the Linguistics major before Fall 2013 can elect to follow the old version of the major, as reflected in the pre-2013 Planner and Record form.

Advising

LING majors and potential majors should
consult Arts and Sciences staff advisor Deanna Fierman concerning Arts
and Science requirements, MAPS deficiencies,
Core requirements outside of Linguistics
and graduation packets. You must
see the staff advisor to declare the
major. Go to the Arts
and Sciences Academic Advising Center
website to make an appointment
with the staff advisor. For advice
about structuring the major according
to your specific interests, consult
with a LING faculty member of your
choice. Once you have declared the major, you should meet with a LING faculty member when selecting your courses for the upcoming semester.
You may meet with any faculty member
whose office hours are convenient for
you (all majors will receive an email list of current LING faculty office hours). Thereafter, you will be required to meet with a LING faculty member during the registration periods of your junior and senior years (in other words, starting at the end of your sophomore year). After advising you, the faculty
member will lift your advising flag
so that you can register for classes
for the coming semester. You will also
need to download a copy of the new LING
Major Planner and Record form.
Keep this form updated for your own
records and bring it with you whenever
you meet with a LING faculty advisor.

Prerequisites for the Major

There are no formal prerequisites
for the lower-division courses in Linguistics.
However, students without strong preparation
in basic grammar should take LING 1500:
Understanding Grammar. This course
may not be counted
toward the total number of credit hours
required for the major.

The Major

As a LING major, you must fulfill
the following requirements:

Complete a total of 32
credit hours in LING and specified
related areas, at least 18 of which
must be upper-division courses.

Maintain a GPA of at least 2.00
(C) in both your major courses and
overall.

Complete all LING courses with
a C- or better.

Complete at least 5 credit
hours of a language other than
English. The 5 credit hours offered in satisfaction of this requirement must be at the 3000 level or above for widely taught languages (French, German, Latin, Spanish), or at the 2000 level or above for less widely taught languages (Arabic, American Sign Language, Chinese, Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish). Only courses taught in the language in question, and focused specifically on language learning, may be used for this requirement. To ensure that the language courses you enroll in will be accepted in satisfaction of the Linguistics language requirement, consult the list of approved language courses in advance of registration. The language requirement
may be waived for native speakers
of languages other than English;
it may also be satisfied by
examination or other evidence
of 3000-level competence. If
the requirement is waived,
you must take additional upper-division
LING elective courses so that
you still meet the College’s
minimum major requirement of
18 hours of upper-division
course work and 30 hours overall
in the major area.

Complete the following
four 3-credit hour courses:

LING 2000 (Introduction
to Linguistics)

LING 3100 (Sound
Structures)

LING 3430 (Semantics)

LING 4420 (Morphology
and Syntax).

Complete 15 credit hours
from the following list of 3-credit
linguistic electives. At
least 9 credit hours of electives
must be upper-division or graduate
courses (or at
least 12 if the language requirement
is waived). Admission
of undergraduates to graduate courses
in Linguistics is allowed only
by permission of the instructor. Note that this list includes multiple upper-division linguistic-content courses outside the Linguistics department (specifically, courses listed under ENGL, FREN, JPNS and SPAN).

ENGL4003 (Introduction to Old English)

FREN 3010 (French Phonetics and Pronunciation)

FREN 3020 (French Phonetics through Musical Performance)

JPNS 4030 (Japanese Syntax)

JPNS 4070 (Second Language Acquisition of Japanese)

JPNS 4080 (Kanji in Japanese Orthography)

LING 1000 (Language
in U.S. Society)

LING 1010 (The
Study of Words)

LING 1020 (Languages of the World)*

LING 2400 (Language
and Gender)*

LING 3005 (Cognitive
Science)

LING 3220 (American
Indian Languages)*

LING 3500 (Language
and the Public Interest)

LING 3545 (World
Language Rights and Policies)

LING 3800 (Topics
in Linguistics)

LING 4100 (Perspectives
on Language)

LING 4220 (Language
and Mind)

LING 4225 (Learning Language in the World)

LING 4450 (Introduction to Formal Syntax)

LING 4560 (Language
Development)

LING 4610 (English
Structure for TESOL)

LING 4800 (Language
and Culture)

LING 4900 (Independent
Study)

LING 4830 (Honors
Thesis)

SPAN 3050 (Spanish Phonology and Phonetics)

SPAN 3150 (Linguistic Analysis of Spanish)

SPAN 4430 (Special Topics in Hispanic Linguistics)

SPAN 4450 (Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics)

Other three-credit courses
offered occasionally by the Linguistics department,
or any graduate Linguistics course

Note that LING 1500 (Understanding
Grammar) does not count towards hours
taken for the LING major, although
it does count towards graduation. Courses
marked with an *asterisk may be taken
to satisfy Arts & Sciences Core
requirements as well as LING requirements.